Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

Google Disables Its iPhone Tracking

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about Google’s iPhone tracking.

Google Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Web browser on their iPhones and computers—tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.

The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users.… More

Is Public-Private Information Sharing Needed to Respond to the Massive Increase in Cyber Attacks?

Interesting article in Friday’s Wall Street Journal on potential cybersecurity legislation to improve information sharing between industry and government.  Perhaps the best part of the article is the citation of statistics from Symantec’s annual Internet Security Threat Report:  Trends for 2009 and 2010 on how many customer has updates Symantec sent out to address new attacks customers were facing:

  • 2002:  20,254 updates
  • 2003:  19,159 updates
  • 2004:  74,981 updates
  • 2005:  113,081 updates
  • 2006:  167,069 updates
  • 2007:  708,742 updates
  • 2008:  1,691,323 updates
  • 2009:  2,895,802 updates
  • 2010:  10,000,000 updates
  • More

Incidents of the Week: Iranian Cyber Army Targets Twitter & $26 Software Application Intercepts U.S. Military Satelite Feeds In Iraq

1.  Iranian Cyber Army Puts Twitter On Hold

Around 10 pm last night, popular social networking site Twitter, was apparently hacked by a group calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army.  Iran and Twitter have had a rocky relationship since last summer when Iranian citizens spread the protests over Iranian elections to the popular web site.  During that time, links circulated on Twitter that allowed users to participate in DoS (Denial of Service) attacks on Iranian government websites. … More

Cyberspies Penetrate U.S. Power Grid

According to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, cyberspies from China, Russia and other countries have penetrated into the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software that could disrupt the system.  According to officials, the spies have not actually damaged the grid or any other key infrastructure, but appear to have been attempting to navigate the electrical system.  More importantly, the intruders could attempt to damage the system during a war or other national security crisis.… More

Big Bump in Federal Cybersecurity Spending?

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 that, worried about the dangers of attacks launched against the nation’s computer systems, the federal government is likely to spend between $15 and $30 billion on cybersecurity in the next five years. The intelligence experts interviewed by the Journal estimate that U.S. losses from data breaches to be in the billions of dollars annually and that future attacks could cause physical harm or serious financial chaos. … More